Advice needed: advanced search module

hello.

i sell crystals and minerals, they are colourful things with various properties. I would like customers to be able to choose properties from a drop down menu e.g. colour. so it would involve having a module that contains a dropdown for colour, a dropdown for hardness, and maybe one for formation type for example. At the moment I have every type of mineral as a category, and products are put into the category for their type e.g. quartz, and then into another cartegory like natural, polished. this gives me a list of minerals by type in the navigation menu but its not like having another menu with selectable product properties.

is this something that could be done with product tags? is there a mod that does anything like this? I've seen the advanced search extensions but i'm not sure they work like this.

thanks.

An idea would be to create attribute groups and attributes for colour/hardness etc

Then use an extension such as Xsecrets 'Layered Navigation' which will allow users to drill down the products by attribute 'Hardness' etc etc

Attribute groups would be a very good way to do it. In my case, each product would have 3 properties or attributes, each from a range of values.
I only need to list products by a single attribute, e.g. all green stones, rather than refining results using multiple attributes. The layered navigation is overkill here.

Ideally I want your simple search module Simon, with 3 dropdowns below it, listing the attributes of the 3 attribute groups. Clicking on any one of those attributes will launch a search query listing all products with that attribute attached.

This would be even better if it could be done with tags, as they show up at the bottom of each product page already and list all related products when clicked.

highvibes wrote:Attribute groups would be a very good way to do it. In my case, each product would have 3 properties or attributes, each from a range of values.
I only need to list products by a single attribute, e.g. all green stones, rather than refining results using multiple attributes. The layered navigation is overkill here.

Ideally I want your simple search module Simon, with 3 dropdowns below it, listing the attributes of the 3 attribute groups. Clicking on any one of those attributes will launch a search query listing all products with that attribute attached.

This would be even better if it could be done with tags, as they show up at the bottom of each product page already and list all related products when clicked.

it will help you
http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... rch=Search
or
http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... rch=Search